Middlemarch

by George Eliot

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  "I found that no genius in another could please me. My unfortunate paradoxes had entirely dried up that source of comfort."--GOLDSMITH.

  One morning, some weeks after her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea--but whyalways Dorothea? Was her point of view the only possible one withregard to this marriage? I protest against all our interest, all oureffort at understanding being given to the young skins that lookblooming in spite of trouble; for these too will get faded, and willknow the older and more eating griefs which we are helping to neglect.In spite of the blinking eyes and white moles objectionable to Celia,and the want of muscular curve which was morally painful to Sir James,Mr. Casaubon had an intense consciousness within him, and wasspiritually a-hungered like the rest of us. He had done nothingexceptional in marrying--nothing but what society sanctions, andconsiders an occasion for wreaths and bouquets. It had occurred to himthat he must not any longer defer his intention of matrimony, and hehad reflected that in taking a wife, a man of good position shouldexpect and carefully choose a blooming young lady--the younger thebetter, because more educable and submissive--of a rank equal to hisown, of religious principles, virtuous disposition, and goodunderstanding. On such a young lady he would make handsomesettlements, and he would neglect no arrangement for her happiness: inreturn, he should receive family pleasures and leave behind him thatcopy of himself which seemed so urgently required of a man--to thesonneteers of the sixteenth century. Times had altered since then, andno sonneteer had insisted on Mr. Casaubon's leaving a copy of himself;moreover, he had not yet succeeded in issuing copies of hismythological key; but he had always intended to acquit himself bymarriage, and the sense that he was fast leaving the years behind him,that the world was getting dimmer and that he felt lonely, was a reasonto him for losing no more time in overtaking domestic delights beforethey too were left behind by the years.

  And when he had seen Dorothea he believed that he had found even morethan he demanded: she might really be such a helpmate to him as wouldenable him to dispense with a hired secretary, an aid which Mr.Casaubon had never yet employed and had a suspicious dread of. (Mr.Casaubon was nervously conscious that he was expected to manifest apowerful mind.) Providence, in its kindness, had supplied him with thewife he needed. A wife, a modest young lady, with the purelyappreciative, unambitious abilities of her sex, is sure to think herhusband's mind powerful. Whether Providence had taken equal care ofMiss Brooke in presenting her with Mr. Casaubon was an idea which couldhardly occur to him. Society never made the preposterous demand that aman should think as much about his own qualifications for making acharming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy. Asif a man could choose not only his wife but his wife's husband! Or asif he were bound to provide charms for his posterity in his ownperson!-- When Dorothea accepted him with effusion, that was onlynatural; and Mr. Casaubon believed that his happiness was going tobegin.

  He had not had much foretaste of happiness in his previous life. Toknow intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have anenthusiastic soul. Mr. Casaubon had never had a strong bodily frame,and his soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was toolanguid to thrill out of self-consciousness into passionate delight; itwent on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinkingof its wings and never flying. His experience was of that pitiablekind which shrinks from pity, and fears most of all that it should beknown: it was that proud narrow sensitiveness which has not mass enoughto spare for transformation into sympathy, and quivers thread-like insmall currents of self-preoccupation or at best of an egoisticscrupulosity. And Mr. Casaubon had many scruples: he was capable of asevere self-restraint; he was resolute in being a man of honoraccording to the code; he would be unimpeachable by any recognizedopinion. In conduct these ends had been attained; but the difficultyof making his Key to all Mythologies unimpeachable weighed like leadupon his mind; and the pamphlets--or "Parerga" as he called them--bywhich he tested his public and deposited small monumental records ofhis march, were far from having been seen in all their significance.He suspected the Archdeacon of not having read them; he was in painfuldoubt as to what was really thought of them by the leading minds ofBrasenose, and bitterly convinced that his old acquaintance Carp hadbeen the writer of that depreciatory recension which was kept locked ina small drawer of Mr. Casaubon's desk, and also in a dark closet of hisverbal memory. These were heavy impressions to struggle against, andbrought that melancholy embitterment which is the consequence of allexcessive claim: even his religious faith wavered with his waveringtrust in his own authorship, and the consolations of the Christian hopein immortality seemed to lean on the immortality of the still unwrittenKey to all Mythologies. For my part I am very sorry for him. It is anuneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not toenjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to beliberated from a small hungry shivering self--never to be fullypossessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousnessrapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardor of apassion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly anduninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dim-sighted. Becoming adean or even a bishop would make little difference, I fear, to Mr.Casaubon's uneasiness. Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed thatbehind the big mask and the speaking-trumpet, there must always be ourpoor little eyes peeping as usual and our timorous lips more or lessunder anxious control.

  To this mental estate mapped out a quarter of a century before, tosensibilities thus fenced in, Mr. Casaubon had thought of annexinghappiness with a lovely young bride; but even before marriage, as wehave seen, he found himself under a new depression in the consciousnessthat the new bliss was not blissful to him. Inclination yearned backto its old, easier custom. And the deeper he went in domesticity themore did the sense of acquitting himself and acting with proprietypredominate over any other satisfaction. Marriage, like religion anderudition, nay, like authorship itself, was fated to become an outwardrequirement, and Edward Casaubon was bent on fulfilling unimpeachablyall requirements. Even drawing Dorothea into use in his study,according to his own intention before marriage, was an effort which hewas always tempted to defer, and but for her pleading insistence itmight never have begun. But she had succeeded in making it a matter ofcourse that she should take her place at an early hour in the libraryand have work either of reading aloud or copying assigned her. Thework had been easier to define because Mr. Casaubon had adopted animmediate intention: there was to be a new Parergon, a small monographon some lately traced indications concerning the Egyptian mysterieswhereby certain assertions of Warburton's could be corrected.References were extensive even here, but not altogether shoreless; andsentences were actually to be written in the shape wherein they wouldbe scanned by Brasenose and a less formidable posterity. These minormonumental productions were always exciting to Mr. Casaubon; digestionwas made difficult by the interference of citations, or by the rivalryof dialectical phrases ringing against each other in his brain. Andfrom the first there was to be a Latin dedication about whicheverything was uncertain except that it was not to be addressed toCarp: it was a poisonous regret to Mr. Casaubon that he had onceaddressed a dedication to Carp in which he had numbered that member ofthe animal kingdom among the viros nullo aevo perituros, a mistakewhich would infallibly lay the dedicator open to ridicule in the nextage, and might even be chuckled over by Pike and Tench in the present.

  Thus Mr. Casaubon was in one of his busiest epochs, and as I began tosay a little while ago, Dorothea joined him early in the library wherehe had breakfasted alone. Celia at this time was on a second visit toLowick, probably the last before her marriage, and was in thedrawing-room expecting Sir James.

  Dorothea had learned to read the signs of her husband's mood, and shesaw that the morning had become more foggy there during the last hour.She was going silently to her desk when he said, in that distant tonewhich implied that he was discharging a disagreeable duty
--

  "Dorothea, here is a letter for you, which was enclosed in oneaddressed to me."

  It was a letter of two pages, and she immediately looked at thesignature.

  "Mr. Ladislaw! What can he have to say to me?" she exclaimed, in atone of pleased surprise. "But," she added, looking at Mr. Casaubon,"I can imagine what he has written to you about."

  "You can, if you please, read the letter," said Mr. Casaubon, severelypointing to it with his pen, and not looking at her. "But I may aswell say beforehand, that I must decline the proposal it contains topay a visit here. I trust I may be excused for desiring an interval ofcomplete freedom from such distractions as have been hithertoinevitable, and especially from guests whose desultory vivacity makestheir presence a fatigue."

  There had been no clashing of temper between Dorothea and her husbandsince that little explosion in Rome, which had left such strong tracesin her mind that it had been easier ever since to quell emotion than toincur the consequence of venting it. But this ill-temperedanticipation that she could desire visits which might be disagreeableto her husband, this gratuitous defence of himself against selfishcomplaint on her part, was too sharp a sting to be meditated on untilafter it had been resented. Dorothea had thought that she could havebeen patient with John Milton, but she had never imagined him behavingin this way; and for a moment Mr. Casaubon seemed to be stupidlyundiscerning and odiously unjust. Pity, that "new-born babe" which wasby-and-by to rule many a storm within her, did not "stride the blast"on this occasion. With her first words, uttered in a tone that shookhim, she startled Mr. Casaubon into looking at her, and meeting theflash of her eyes.

  "Why do you attribute to me a wish for anything that would annoy you?You speak to me as if I were something you had to contend against.Wait at least till I appear to consult my own pleasure apart fromyours."

  "Dorothea, you are hasty," answered Mr. Casaubon, nervously.

  Decidedly, this woman was too young to be on the formidable level ofwifehood--unless she had been pale and featureless and takeneverything for granted.

  "I think it was you who were first hasty in your false suppositionsabout my feeling," said Dorothea, in the same tone. The fire was notdissipated yet, and she thought it was ignoble in her husband not toapologize to her.

  "We will, if you please, say no more on this subject, Dorothea. I haveneither leisure nor energy for this kind of debate."

  Here Mr. Casaubon dipped his pen and made as if he would return to hiswriting, though his hand trembled so much that the words seemed to bewritten in an unknown character. There are answers which, in turningaway wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have adiscussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your ownside is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.

  Dorothea left Ladislaw's two letters unread on her husband'swriting-table and went to her own place, the scorn and indignationwithin her rejecting the reading of these letters, just as we hurl awayany trash towards which we seem to have been suspected of meancupidity. She did not in the least divine the subtle sources of herhusband's bad temper about these letters: she only knew that they hadcaused him to offend her. She began to work at once, and her hand didnot tremble; on the contrary, in writing out the quotations which hadbeen given to her the day before, she felt that she was forming herletters beautifully, and it seemed to her that she saw the constructionof the Latin she was copying, and which she was beginning tounderstand, more clearly than usual. In her indignation there was asense of superiority, but it went out for the present in firmness ofstroke, and did not compress itself into an inward articulate voicepronouncing the once "affable archangel" a poor creature.

  There had been this apparent quiet for half an hour, and Dorothea hadnot looked away from her own table, when she heard the loud bang of abook on the floor, and turning quickly saw Mr. Casaubon on the librarysteps clinging forward as if he were in some bodily distress. Shestarted up and bounded towards him in an instant: he was evidently ingreat straits for breath. Jumping on a stool she got close to hiselbow and said with her whole soul melted into tender alarm--

  "Can you lean on me, dear?"

  He was still for two or three minutes, which seemed endless to her,unable to speak or move, gasping for breath. When at last he descendedthe three steps and fell backward in the large chair which Dorothea haddrawn close to the foot of the ladder, he no longer gasped but seemedhelpless and about to faint. Dorothea rang the bell violently, andpresently Mr. Casaubon was helped to the couch: he did not faint, andwas gradually reviving, when Sir James Chettam came in, having been metin the hall with the news that Mr. Casaubon had "had a fit in thelibrary."

  "Good God! this is just what might have been expected," was hisimmediate thought. If his prophetic soul had been urged toparticularize, it seemed to him that "fits" would have been thedefinite expression alighted upon. He asked his informant, the butler,whether the doctor had been sent for. The butler never knew his masterto want the doctor before; but would it not be right to send for aphysician?

  When Sir James entered the library, however, Mr. Casaubon could makesome signs of his usual politeness, and Dorothea, who in the reactionfrom her first terror had been kneeling and sobbing by his side nowrose and herself proposed that some one should ride off for a medicalman.

  "I recommend you to send for Lydgate," said Sir James. "My mother hascalled him in, and she has found him uncommonly clever. She has had apoor opinion of the physicians since my father's death."

  Dorothea appealed to her husband, and he made a silent sign ofapproval. So Mr. Lydgate was sent for and he came wonderfully soon,for the messenger, who was Sir James Chettam's man and knew Mr.Lydgate, met him leading his horse along the Lowick road and giving hisarm to Miss Vincy.

  Celia, in the drawing-room, had known nothing of the trouble till SirJames told her of it. After Dorothea's account, he no longerconsidered the illness a fit, but still something "of that nature."

  "Poor dear Dodo--how dreadful!" said Celia, feeling as much grieved asher own perfect happiness would allow. Her little hands were clasped,and enclosed by Sir James's as a bud is enfolded by a liberal calyx."It is very shocking that Mr. Casaubon should be ill; but I never didlike him. And I think he is not half fond enough of Dorothea; and heought to be, for I am sure no one else would have had him--do youthink they would?"

  "I always thought it a horrible sacrifice of your sister," said SirJames.

  "Yes. But poor Dodo never did do what other people do, and I think shenever will."

  "She is a noble creature," said the loyal-hearted Sir James. He hadjust had a fresh impression of this kind, as he had seen Dorotheastretching her tender arm under her husband's neck and looking at himwith unspeakable sorrow. He did not know how much penitence there wasin the sorrow.

  "Yes," said Celia, thinking it was very well for Sir James to say so,but _he_ would not have been comfortable with Dodo. "Shall I go toher? Could I help her, do you think?"

  "I think it would be well for you just to go and see her before Lydgatecomes," said Sir James, magnanimously. "Only don't stay long."

  While Celia was gone he walked up and down remembering what he hadoriginally felt about Dorothea's engagement, and feeling a revival ofhis disgust at Mr. Brooke's indifference. If Cadwallader--if everyone else had regarded the affair as he, Sir James, had done, themarriage might have been hindered. It was wicked to let a young girlblindly decide her fate in that way, without any effort to save her.Sir James had long ceased to have any regrets on his own account: hisheart was satisfied with his engagement to Celia. But he had achivalrous nature (was not the disinterested service of woman among theideal glories of old chivalry?): his disregarded love had not turned tobitterness; its death had made sweet odors--floating memories thatclung with a consecrating effect to Dorothea. He could remain herbrotherly friend, interpreting her actions with generous trustfulness.